While technology utilized today has led to widespread use of electronic documents in certain environments, paper documents have not been completely exorcised. As a result, in many environments both electronic documents and paper documents may be utilized. The simultaneous use of paper and electronic documents has imposed an inconvenient and oft-clumsy segregation with respect to the searching of such documents.
To illustrate, there may be a wide variety of ways in which to search electronic documents. For example, in many cases electronic documents may be managed by a content management system which provides an interface that may be utilized to search those documents (e.g., by keywords, content, etc.). Additionally, electronic documents that may reside at multiple disparate locations may be indexed and the index of those documents used to search for a document. Thus, once a desired electronic document is obtained (e.g., through searching or otherwise) the content of that electronic document may be used to search other electronic documents for other electronic documents that may be similar (e.g., with respect to terms contained, content, etc.).
Paper documents may also be searched. In many cases, paper documents may be organized (alphabetized, catalogued according to an organizational system, etc.) such that those paper documents may be searched or otherwise located. Again, then, once a desired paper document is obtained (e.g., through searching or otherwise) the content of that paper document may be used to search other paper documents that may be similar (e.g., through manual searching of those paper documents).
In environments that utilize both paper documents and electronic documents it is oftentimes desired to find electronic documents based on a paper documents. Currently, the only way to perform such a search is to manually review a paper document and use a provided search interface to manually perform a search of the electronic documents based on the manual review of the paper documents.
What is desired then, are systems and methods that allow electronic documents to be searched based on paper documents. In essence, a more seamless connection between physical paper documents and the ability to search, find, and utilize corresponding or associated electronic documents.